The nonprofit revealed the Scout project in an agenda item for an all-hands meeting taking place this week in San Francisco. "With the Scout app, we start to explore browsing and consuming content with voice," Mozilla said. A sample command shows how it might work: "Hey Scout, read me the article about polar bears."

For Mozilla, a voice-controlled browser could open up a new way to use the web, and provide a possible source of growth and relevance for a browser maker that's struggled to compete with Google'sChrome. Chrome accounts for 58 percent of web usage compared with Firefox's 5 percent, according to analytics firm StatCounter.

And it could help reshape the internet for people with vision problems who today rely on screen readers and other difficult fixes to adapt the internet. Part of Mozilla's mission is to foster "an internet that includes all the peoples of the earth -- where a person's demographic characteristics do not determine their online access, opportunities or quality of experience."

Mozilla wouldn't comment in detail about what it termed an "early-stage project."

"We use our internal All Hands conference to come together so we can plan and build for the future," Mozilla said. "We look forward to discussing these efforts publicly when they are further developed."

Earlier at the all-hands meeting, Mozilla presented some indications of success with the Quantum push. Firefox has been downloaded 100 million times, and people are sticking with the browser 6 percent more than in the past, Chief Marketing Office Jascha Kaykas-Wolff told Mozillians on Tuesday.